"Oh, yes, I wish to please you," said Massimo; "it's the sole object of my life." "Well, I don't appreciate your jokes. There are plenty of women very inferior to me, and you won't succeed in pleasing even them." "I shall succeed with the superior ones, perhaps." "I don't think there are many women superior to me; if there are, you'll never get within a stone's throw of them." "Then I suppose I'm one of the inferiors?" said Regina, for the sake of saying something. "Yes, because you're married. A superior woman never marries. Or if in some spell of unconsciousness she does take a husband, she repents at once. If I wished to pay you a compliment, I should say I believe you are repenting." "By Jove!" said Antonio, "that's not a matter of joke." "Do you always tell the Princess the truth?" asked Regina. "Of course she keeps me only for that purpose," said Marianna, looking, not without affection, at the Princess. Madame was telling Arduina a story of her aunt. "--the handsomest and smartest woman in Paris," she said. "I've told you of her marriage, haven't I? They married her at fifteen to the lover of a lady who remained her friend for ten years, her friend, her confidante, her guide. For ten years she never guessed----" Sor Mario, buried in his arm-chair, was listening, fighting with sleepiness and the desire to pick his teeth. Marianna began to abuse Nietzsche and his opinion of women, but Regina's attention wandered to the Princess's stories, scraps of which reached her across the screaming and the audacities of the younger lady. "If women understood him, they'd agree," said Massimo; "they don't approve because they don't understand." "They do better than approve, they refute him," said Marianna. "If Gaspare were here," said Antonio, "he'd soon settle the question." Regina's soul shivered at the mere recollection of Gaspare, and his mother, and the servant. "Her second husband was a Spaniard," narrated the Princess, "the handsomest man you could see, and acquainted with all the literary personages of his time. But his conduct----" "The education of women has not even begun," said Marianna, turning to Regina; "women will never have any sense till men begin to tell them the truth." "But what is the truth?" asked Massimo; "truth between man and woman only comes out when they quarrel." "That's true up to a certain point. I'm always wondering why truth is so disagreeable to everybody. They tell me I'm cracked because I never tell lies. Nobody cares, because _my_ words don't really interest the person I'm talking to. But let's suppose this lady were to tell her husband all she was thinking, her real impressions, her real idea of him, his family, his friends. I'm certain Signor Antonio would fall quite sick----" "Regina!" cried Antonio, in feigned alarm, "can this be true?" Regina laughed, but a shudder as of great cold interrupted her false merriment. The Princess was continuing her story.